


At Odds

by Leni



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Post-Chosen, Post-Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leni/pseuds/Leni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel will offer sanctuary to any who needs it - even if that leaves him facing off the Slayer.</p>
<p>
  <i>"Haven't we been here before?" Buffy mused out loud. "Me, chasing after one of the bad guys and thinking you're going to be reasonable and help me out. You, not doing either."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Odds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> Written for Tigriswolf at [Comment Fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/621281.html?thread=85602529#t85602529). Prompt: **Angel the Series/Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel(us) + author’s choice, if any of Angel(us)’s children or grandchildren had ever asked him for sanctuary, he would’ve given it. even from the Slayer.**

Buffy rubbed at the tender spot on her chin. A decade since they'd last sparred together, and Angel still remembered her weaknesses. How irritating. The least he could do was to pretend he didn't know how to counter her best hits because he'd been the one to teach them to her.

"This is going nowhere," she muttered. 

For every trick she'd learned since they'd been together in Sunnydale, he had learned one of his own.

They wouldn't settle this with a fight.

Which left them to _talk_ about the issue at hand - and boy, had they always made a mess out of that!

But this wasn't personal. Not really.

It just might work.

Still breathing heavily, Buffy held a hand up, calling for a break. She looked around the remains of his office and limped to one of the overturned chairs, putting it upright with a slam of metal against the floor. That done, she settled on it with a groan.

Her only consolation was that he must be in just as much pain. After the first few minutes, once they'd grown confident that the other could take the damage, neither had bothered to hold back. 

"Somehow," he said, retreating to the other corner of the room and leaning against the wall. Always smart, to cover one's back when a Slayer came calling. Never thought he and Buffy would be doing battle again, though. "I don't believe you're giving up."

Buffy chuckled. "Why, you're letting me in now?"

He shook his head.

The door to his right stayed closed. The one who'd sought sanctuary under his roof still protected beyond it.

"Haven't we been here before?" she mused out loud, somehow unsurprised that she and Angel had managed to come full circle again. Even in this. "Me, chasing after one of the bad guys and thinking you're going to be reasonable and help me out. You, not doing either."

Angel quirked a smile at the summary of their confrontation over Faith. "Or," he countered, "you, focused on revenge, while I'm trying to stop you from killing someone who wouldn't defend herself."

Buffy bristled. "This is different."

"Not really." He sighed, and tried another appeal. "Since I was right, that time, and the one you came after is now your second in command, you might consider giving me the benefit of the doubt now."

She gave a laugh of wild disbelief. "In your dreams."

"It'd be murder, Buffy," he said, more softly.

"No. It would be justice."

Angel glanced at her, unwillingly surprised by the harsh tone. Despite the evidence before his eyes, this grown woman with the impatient green glare and the weight of the world _still_ on her shoulders, he needed to remind himself that she wasn't the optimistic young girl he'd loved ten years ago.

Even that girl would have been protested the idea of Drusilla deserving protection.

"She is harmless, like this."

Buffy didn't care. There were forty-two young Slayers under her care, and two weeks ago the bodies of three of them had turned up in a park on the other side of London. Their murderer hadn't even tried to hide, instead coming close enough to taunt them but never within reach of their stakes.

If they didn't have magic on their side, they'd still be playing her mad version of hide-and-seek.

"She killed my girls, Angel," she tried to explain again, fisting her hands to stop them from flying at his face. How could he stand there, and protect that monster! "The youngest was only fourteen - not even in formal training, just out to the movies with the others."

Angel closed his eyes, mouth tight with sympathetic grief.

But he still shook his head.

"Damn you," she gritted out, jumping to her feet.

Angel straightened, too, but settled onto a wary position when she didn't rush at him. "I told you," he said, drawing onto some remnant of patience, "whatever spell Willow used has made her forget everything."

"Yet she still came to you. How accommodating, amnesia."

Angel wondered whether to tell her who'd brought a sedated Drusilla across the Atlantic and to his doorstep, but he kept quiet. If he didn't manage to convince her to turn around and return home, Spike might be able to. "She had help," he told her, leaving it to her imagination to supply the details. "You're not the only one who's owed favors, Buffy, and everyone knows that Dru's one of mine."

She reared back at his easy admission. Time was, he'd have tried to distance himself of everything he'd done - and everyone he'd destroyed - while he'd been soulless.

"Lucky Dru," Buffy sneered, recovering. "Poor little mass-murderer has finally come home to Daddy, is that it? The happy family she always wanted... and now she doesn't even have to cut you into ribbons to get you."

Angel ignored the memory of pain that arose at the words. "I told you, she doesn't remember anything. Not who she is, not what she became." _Thanks to me,_ he doesn't add. He is responsible for Drusilla, always has been, and now he can at last do something to atone for making her into a monster. "She deserves our mercy."

Buffy eyed him. "And you get to play the hero," she said, the insight cutting too close for comfort. "Really, Angel, are we back to that?"

As if Buffy had ever really needed a hero. He'd left her, as others had done before and would do after, and she still stood strong and proud - and always so sure that she was in the right. 

There was no place for doubt when one was saving the world, Angel understood that. But this wasn't the world at stake, just one person's life.

Angel liked to believe that, even ten years ago when Buffy had been the brightest star in his life, he would have stood against her in this. "She needs help."

And he helped the hopeless. Whoever that turned out to be.

"Who cares!" Buffy snapped. "I broke Spike's legs, and he's been running circles around me ever since. I stuck _a sword_ in you, and you look fine to me! You know that Drusilla will get better, too, and where will 'mercy' have left us?"

Of course he had thought of that already. 

"I don't know that it will come to that. But if it does -" He shrugged, thinking of the scared young girl hiding in terror of her own urges. He knew what she could become; he'd once coddled and petted his beautiful, mad killer, and had purred in delight when she'd come home bathed in blood. He wouldn't let history repeat itself. "I'll do what must be done."

Buffy glanced at him searchingly, but at last gave a small nod.

If nothing else, she knew that Angel always did the right thing. No matter that the heart he broke was his own, as well.

"Sounds good," she admitted, but then gave him a knowing look. "But will you even know when it's time? She will try to play you, Angel. The sweet-faced girl with a sob story... and I don't believe you've changed so much that you won't try to believe her. You're too trusting, always were." Before he could protest, she had reached a decision. "But I don't trust her at all. She won't fool me."

"No," he cut in, realizing where this was going.

"Your choice." Buffy gave him a stubborn look. "I can stick around to make sure she's not faking, or we can continue scrapping over who gets to her door first."

Angel eyed her. "No threats about bringing the other Slayers in?"

"Because you'd let them succeed where I haven't?" For the first time since she'd knocked on his door, there was real amusement in her voice. "Come, Angel, brute force only makes you fight harder - don't think I haven't heard the stories."

Wolfram and Hart had learned that lesson the hard way. They could force him to bend, but as long as he remained unbroken he was useless to them. They'd finally left him alone out of sheer weariness.

He doubted Buffy would be as easily diverted.

"If you see her, there will be rules."

She sneered. "Oh, I'll be all sweetness. Wouldn't want to slow her recuperation, would I?"

Angel closed his eyes. How could it be that the thought of Buffy and Drusilla in the same room terrified him now more than it had done ten years ago?

"We'll be the best of friends," Buffy promised, an approximation of a cheery smile on her lips. "She'll never know I have a stake to plunge in her chest as soon as I catch her eyeing my neck too intently."

Angel groaned.

Oh yes, that was how.

 

The End  
27/09/15


End file.
